What We Lost

Peter woke on the ground, but he couldn't remember getting there.

Everything was silent. A pressing white noise so vacant it was deafening, and nothing at all stirred but the slow rise and fall of his chest. Lying on his back, he opened his eyes not to the fading after-image of a corrugated ceiling, but instead the velvet blanket of a vast, cloudless sky high above.

A sky that was... flashing?

Confused, Peter frowned up at the moon chasing the sun between elongated skyscrapers, shadows washing over him where he lay while days and nights passed before his eyes like the swinging beat of a pendulum.

Feeling oddly weightless, he picked himself up from the middle of an abandoned city street, lined on both sides by a row of neat trees. And suddenly the niggling thought that he was forgetting something important didn't seem to matter anymore, that he was supposed to be somewhere else.

He didn't understand. It should have been New York City. The streets Peter had grown up in, the island on which he'd spent nearly every day of his life, but he didn't know this place. It was an amalgamation, a hybrid, a new face whose features merely resembled those of his hometown. The city was deserted: empty streets and empty buildings lined with a million windows gaping at him like hollowed eye sockets, watching him struggle to find his bearings. There were no signs of life. Not even a car had been abandoned by the sidewalk, not one old newspaper fluttered through the windless air. Peter shivered, although there was no temperature. His faint breath shuddered, although there was no sound.

And then the echo of raised voices behind him made his heart thump loudly in his chest.

Peter span just as the sun froze in the sky, high on the crest of a bright and clear morning. He recognised the voices rebounding off vacant husks of buildings around him, just before two men turned a corner and appeared into view, one storming ahead while the other tagged along angrily at his heels. Peter couldn't have hid even if he wasn't exposed out in a wide open road, his feet rooting him to the spot as his blood instantly ran cold.

"...like it or not, Peter, you're stuck here forever, with me, and I am trying here! Are you? 'Cause it sure as hell doesn't feel like it!"

"Am I supposed to feel guilty? You murdered my brother, I don't owe you anything!"

"Yes, I did. I murdered him." Sylar snarled, and although he wasn't shouting this time his words reverberated further, more clearly, than the others before. "I slit his throat and watched him bleed out and I didn't even care. He died alone, Peter. Scared. Defeated -"

"Stop it!"

Heart racing faster, Peter saw himself turn on his enemy, hands balled into fists at his side. Sylar stopped walking in response, head held high. And all the while Peter was outside it all, unharmed, invisible on the outskirts as he just stood there gazing at the surreal sight unfolding before him. Holy shit.

"- And I've said it a thousand times before, and even if you don't believe me that doesn't change the fact that I'm -"

"Don't!"

"- Sorry."

The word ricocheted around the barren city. It lodged itself in Peter's gut like a bullet shard, sympathy pains felt from the shaking young empath standing before him in the distance. "Stop saying that. You don't mean it. If you were sorry you wouldn't have killed him. If you were sorry you wouldn't have killed any of them."

Sylar scowled after the smaller man as he continued storming along the street, drawing closer to where his dream-like counterpart stood. Neither of them noticed him at all.

"Oh I get it," The killer tagged along again, more infused with a fiery emotion than Peter had ever known him. "You've never made a mistake. You've never looked back and wished for a do-over. That you could change, that you'd made different choices, that you knew then what you know now, because your life has been nothing but a series of winning decisions, is that what you're saying?!" Sylar grabbed after his accuser, wrenching him back around by the arm. "'Cause from where I'm standing, it looks like they only served to land you in the exact same shithole as mine."

Peter tugged himself free. "At least I never killed everyone who ever tried to love me!"

The following silence rang out loudly. Now close enough to the pair to make out the nuances in both men's faces, Peter watched with a weight constricting his chest as Sylar reeled, deeply wounded. Regret shone plainly on his own self's face, for just a heartbeat too long before it was forcibly concealed behind a mask of defiance.

Sylar's reply was quiet, but not gentle. "Loved ones. Mothers. Friends. Tell me, where are yours, Peter?"

The counter attack winded Peter Petrelli. Both the haunted man currently backing away from his enemy's space, and the spectre set adrift in the strange city that didn't belong to him. Peter and Sylar glared at one another, two lost souls forced together among nothingness, concrete, brick and stone, the double-bladed burn of rage rising between them like smoke in the air.

Sylar tipped his head slightly in a manner anyone else could construe as sympathetic. "I wonder what's worse? The thought that everyone else out there is dead; or that none of your precious heroes have bothered to look for you all this time?" He twitched one heavy eyebrow to hammer the point home. "Do you think anyone's even noticed you're missing? Or do they just not care?"

For a moment, the looming promise of an echoing crack of a punch rang throughout the city. But none came. Peter didn't attack, and he didn't make a sound beyond the pained catching of his breath. Then he tightened his fists and turned his back on Sylar one last time, picking up the pace as he left the killer behind.

"Like it or not, Petrelli, I'm all you've got!" Sylar called after him, teeth bared. "And neither of us are going anywhere for a long, long time!"

Peter's heart lurched when his other self faltered a step, almost level with where he hid, veiled out of time. He fought the urge to reach out and bridge the impassable distance with a touch, as the same vulnerability and fear that itched within his ribcage flickered over the other man's face, pooling in his eyes. But then his dream counterpart pushed on, leaving a full, unobstructed view of Sylar's dampening temper in his wake.

Slowly, the killer's scowl eased. He hunched in on himself, watching every step as his only means of company walked away.

It might have been the first time Peter had ever witnessed something close to shame from the guy. Something close to regret. It was a painful pill to swallow, like it went down the wrong way. And when Sylar finally dropped his eyeline to the ground and turned his back, Peter hurried to follow his own footsteps deeper into the city without pausing to witness one more second of the killer.

But as soon as he took his first step the sky fast-forwarded again and he was alone.

Morning became noon became night as Peter found himself lost among vacant streets and stretching shadows that snatched at his heels like fingers. Guided by an invisible cord looped around his waist, he searched with no direction, intention or idea where he was going, just a ghost adrift in an endless maze that re-arranged itself in his peripheral vision.

He lost track of how many times the sun rolled across the sky before it stalled once again, a red glimmer hanging low between the towering spires of skyscrapers. Peter stopped running, somehow not even out of breath, once he was framed in the open mouth of a back alley, the sunset staining a towering brick wall blocking the far end crimson.

The hairs on the back of his neck tickled as he caught sight of himself once again, unmistakable in his fury, stalking the length of the alley ahead. At the far end, Sylar climbed to his feet at the base of the wall to accommodate the approach. And even from this far away, with merely one glimpse of him, he certainly didn't look like the same, smug serial killer Peter's nightmares had been plagued by for years.

Again locked in place, he watched himself stomp towards the murderer without easing or slowing down; watched Sylar ball his hands into fists but not lift them; watched himself raise his arms and tackle Sylar around the neck, winding him, knocking the breath from them both – but it wasn't a fight. Instead, they both swayed with the momentum of something so unexpected, something so harmless, as a hug.

Alone on the outskirts of this secret, Peter's throat tightly constricted. He couldn't breathe. He didn't need to. He was only a ghost, anyway.

Floating closer to the exchange without even taking a step, he couldn't seem to make sense of the bewilderment shining plainly across Sylar's face. Or his own arms holding the guy close, or the sound of his soft, strangled voice muffled in the depths of Sylar's shoulder.

As if he hadn't ever been a mortal enemy. As if he wasn't a ruthless serial killer. As if he'd never heartlessly cut down Nathan Petrelli in his prime.

"You were right." Realistically, the words shouldn't have rebounded down the alley, but Peter heard them anyway. "No one's out there looking for us. No one's coming to save us. It's just you and me, Sylar, and I just can't... I can't fight with you anymore."

Peter's arms tightened around the taller man. And only then did Sylar let his eyes flutter closed and tentatively place his hands on Peter's back. He bent down into the hug, returning it, indulging in the feel of it as if it were the first of his life.

"It's down to us. Alright?" Peter continued huskily. "It's you and me, and I don't wanna live this way forever. I can't carry this... this hate much longer. I can't, I –" He paused to chase a breath, and when he continued his voice was dangerously close to cracking. "We can't keep going like this if we're gonna survive, here. We've gotta do better, Sylar. We've gotta make it work. Okay?"

For a long time the men simply stood there entwined, rocking slightly on the spot, where no one could see them and no one would ever know. And in that reprieve it didn't matter that they'd shattered one another in the past, or that they shouldn't want to hold each other close, because for a moment it was as if the fights had never happened and the miles of blood stained history belonged to someone else.

Watching, Peter struggled to swallow when Sylar slowly nodded his head in agreement. When he then pried the smaller man away with gentle hands and an unfamiliar softness to his eyes, and just held him there close, looking down into his face as the whisper floated down the alley and imprinted into the witness's skin.

"I want to make it work, Peter..."

Time sped up again before he could see what happened next, before he was ready, erasing the men, the wall and the words from the slate like they'd never existed at all. Day and night pulsed around Peter once more as he struggled to keep up, resuming the endless path to nowhere with less blind trust than before. As he searched vacant streets he shivered, and as he walked broken roads he worried, plagued with the strangest sense that this time he'd left more than just the alley behind.

The city warped around him. Buildings moved when he wasn't looking. Brief flashes of sunlight revealed new sights that hadn't been there the moment before. And then night fell steady and constant upon the world and Peter was somehow high atop a rusting fire escape, outside the only window in the sprawling city that housed the warm glow of light. Of life.

Helpless to resist, he numbly phased through the window as if he were a phantom, heart pounding heavier than ever in his chest.

Inside, the apartment was dark, cluttered, unfamiliar. Floating shelves lined the walls, packed to the brim with canned food while their previous occupants scattered the floor in precarious piles of books. A workbench stood near the back wall, buried beneath some sort of mechanical scraps Peter couldn't make out from here. But he wasn't really looking. Because that glow of a light didn't come from within these rooms, he now realised, but from between them.

A hidden hatch stood open in one wall. A two-way mirror that revealed a winding, shadowy corridor beyond. And the swinging light bulb within lured Peter in deeper as if he didn't have a choice but to obey.

Just as before, the two living souls in this place didn't look up as he approached them in the dark. They didn't even acknowledge him. And just as before, Peter couldn't name the mass of emotions that ached within his chest at the very sight of himself and Sylar, sitting silently side by side on the floor, their backs against the dusty inside of a wall.

The taste of horror seemed familiar on his tongue. But if this was due to the tears currently drying on Sylar's flushed face, or the desperate screams scrawled by bloody fingertips on the walls, he couldn't decide.

"It's from... before. Way before, when my ability first..." Sylar tried then faded off, as if he didn't even know the words. Meanwhile, sitting beside him, Peter nodded and took a steadying breath, caught between giving his split attention to the crying man or the ghastly bloodied 'forgive me's towering above.

"S'okay."

"No, Peter. It's not."

Still sniffling slightly, the killer turned to Peter, exhausted and unguarded and unashamed of his vulnerability in a way that sent more spasms tightly clenching through the empath's heart. Because this wasn't an act and it wasn't a pity plea, and as much as he hated it, and as much as the sight made his stomach cramp as if he were about to throw up, Peter couldn't tear his gaze away from the blatantly human sight of the man visible in fractures behind his shattered facade.

Sylar's voice was soft when he elaborated, thick with a recent burst of emotion that had yet to fade. "None of itis okay. No matter what I do or how many times I start, I can never get past... this." He blinked rapidly, not quite looking at a hundred broken attempts at redemption pressing in on him from all sides. "I've tried. I really tried, so many times, and I wanted to be better. But after all these years... I just don't think I'm strong enough on my own. And no one has ever stayed long enough to..." He stopped himself again, scowling at his own self-pity.

The Peter on the ground tore his focus from the sorry sight of Sylar, looking up again upon the defaced walls. A timeline. A mural of blood, sweat and tears, a memorial of the killer's endless battle with his demons. And Peter drank in each word despite the burn.

Please forgive me... Help me... I'm sorry... Forgive me... Please...

Eyes threatening to well up, he closed them just briefly, biting his lip. "I will."

"What?"

"I'll stay." Peter clarified, sighing out all the tension in his frame. Sylar stared at him. "I won't leave you. I won't run out on you. I won't lie, or betray you, or manipulate you like my mother did." Now Sylar looked so affronted that a sudden telekinetic choke hold wouldn't be a surprise. But instead he just gaped at Peter, lips twitching soundlessly as he struggled to untangle his thoughts into something resembling words. "If you're serious about wanting to be better, Sylar... I'll help you." Peter finished, a soft exhale. Only then did he meet the killer's eyes, and there was no room for doubt in that tiny corridor that he knew exactly what he was signing himself up for. That they all did.

Silence stretched for a long time. Until the older man recovered some semblance of his vocal chords. "Wh-why would you want to do that?" The question was laced with hope and suspicion, two compounds at war with each other.

But Peter just looked at him, and the honesty on his face was clear for all to see. "'Cause the guy who wrote this?" He glanced back at the blood-scrawled walls as if pained. "He never had that chance. And maybe if someone had just listened to him back then... none of this would've happened." He offered Sylar a sad little curve of his lips. "Maybe all you needed was a friend."

The killer's heavy brows eased from their furrow. Fresh tears streamed from his disbelieving eyes. Too late, he seemed to notice what was happening and averted his face, tremors consuming his hunched form. And rather than leave, Peter leaned into him, a comforting warmth. And rather than recoil, the empath reached for Sylar's hand and held it gently, surely, and just sat with the man in silence while he cried.

And then time shifted forward again.

Left reeling on the spot, Peter the spectator, the ghost, tried to blink away the blurriness stinging at his own eyes. When it subsided he saw he was no longer crowded by bloody prayers or that lone, swinging light bulb: he was back outside on the fire escape. And that same old cord, his guide, was pulling him on again, but he didn't want to answer the call this time.

The tangled mass of feeling expanded further inside with every step he ascended the rusty staircase. More years flew past within moments. And the whispering breath of wind grew louder the higher he climbed.

On the final step, darkness blanketed the city for the last time. The sky was vast and starless high above, the rooftop captured in the cool tones and hues of the illusive moment between evening and night. Shaking slightly, it took Peter a moment to realise that the whispering breaths didn't belong to the wind, after all. And through shadow he discerned the shapes of two bodies on the ground, naked and writhing beneath a bundle of discarded clothing.

He meant to jump back from the scene but the steel cord wouldn't let him. So Peter was forced to hide here in the dark, unable to feel his limbs at the sight of his own self kissing the lips of his enemy. The pair broke apart with deep, shuddering breaths, and Peter watched himself lie back and smile sleepily at the man in his arms.

Then a murmur punctured the night, sending goosebumps rolling down his spine.

"Do you trust me, Peter?"

"Why, you think I'd do all that with just anyone?" The empath chuckled and pressed a kiss to Sylar's shoulder. But when the man didn't laugh Peter propped himself up on an elbow to better look down upon him. "What's up, buddy?" He prompted with another small smile, trailing a hand over the killer's bare chest and stirring the hair there.

The gesture was so natural and yet so obscene, that in the rational corner of his mind Peter wanted to yell and run – no fly – away before he saw something else he'd never be able to shake. But he was still chained in place by something heavier than shock, and the warden of fate wouldn't let him move or even make a sound. Instead, he bore witness to the exchange of intimate touches, adoration, a familiarity that he'd never been able to keep with anyone in reality.

"I was just thinking about Elle." Sylar confessed, looking up into the darkening sky.

Peter's caresses slowed. "Oh." The spectre watched his own face fall slightly, far too familiar with that feeling not to experience second hand rejection gnawing at him now.

"Not like that." Sylar appeased Peter slightly by prying the man's hand from his chest to absently entwine their fingers, but still didn't drop his gaze from the heavens. "I was thinking about how... how I didn't kill her for her ability. I killed her because she betrayed me."

Peter frowned, the ease from earlier fading. "Is that supposed to make it okay?"

"No. But it makes it different. She lied to me. It was... personal, the others weren't." Peter's sigh finally earned Sylar's full attention, and when the smaller man untangled himself from the killer as if to get up, Sylar held onto his wrist, keeping him there. "I could have loved her, Peter."

On the far side of the rooftop, Peter felt that word impact like a sledgehammer to the gut. Love. But on the ground, he didn't look surprised by this information at all, reluctantly indulging the other man with a scowl still dirtying his brow.

"I trusted her. I let her in. But she..." Sylar's expression grew distant then, cast back through time. "...Recoiled. And I reacted. It was... fragile."

The empath huffed impatiently through his nose, biting his lip. "What're you trying to tell me, Sylar?"

Sylar fell quiet, his face unmasked in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to his enemy. And more than he had when intruding upon the secret closet of bloody remorse, or catching the pair naked and breathless with sweat still drying on their skin, Peter felt wrong, voyeuristic, to be spying on such an intimate sight from the shadows as that expression.

Sylar reached up to trail Peter's long, tousled hair from obscuring his eye, a painfully sweet gesture. And when he took a breath it shook slightly. "This place? You and me? Whatever the hell we've gotten ourselves into... It's fragile, too. It's special." He gave up on the stubborn lock when it refused to stay put, dropping his hands to fold across his stomach. A shadow of affliction passed over his face. "And if people knew they'd try to take it from us."

Peter relaxed back down over his companion, lips quirking up on the working side. "Then we won't let them."

Sylar tried to smile in response to the gentle nuzzling of his nose. A weak, short-lived thing. "You're too trusting, Peter, and I'm too destructive and it would be easy, too easy, to ruin this if they wanted, which they will. And if we ever do wake up and all this feels like a dream, I don't want there to be any doubts between us. Nothing they can use."

Concern ghosted across Peter's features. He climbed free of his companion to fall flat on his back beside him, looking unseeingly into the ebony void far above. "Why are you saying these things?" He hugged his arms around his own torso, suddenly feeling the cold he hadn't a moment before.

And the spectre on the sidelines only drew closer to the scene, ever helpless, defenceless to resist.

Sylar turned his head to survey Peter, shadows emphasising the heavy angles of his face while his messy hair splayed out around him, thick and dark on the ground. He should have looked dangerous lying there so close, heart rate still elevated, skin still heated. He shouldn't have looked handsome, striking in his vulnerability. But he did. And only more so when amusement brightened the serial killer's features through the slight pursing of his lips. "Do you remember I told you about Lydia from the carnival?"

Still refusing to look at him, Peter just nodded, only more confused. An affectionate smirk twinkled at the corners of Sylar's eyes. And he was even less recognisable as the brutal murderer that had ripped reality to shreds in his wake.

"I've been thinking for a while, now. And if we ever get outta here... I want you to use her ability on me."

At first, Peter just met the man's eyes, blinking quickly at him while he processed. Then he pushed himself into a sitting position, squinting down at Sylar as if the statement would be clearer from that angle. His hand shook while he ran it through his dishevelled hair, and only upon close inspection was it evident that Sylar was holding his breath.

Stunned, Peter could barely muster his voice. "You'd trust me to read your soul?" He looked unsure, as if at any moment he expected his companion to reveal it as some sort of joke. But Sylar only nodded, that knowing, affectionate smirk washing across the rest of his features. And sudden tears welled up in the empath's eyes, refusing to fall, in the moment the truth finally hit home. "Really?" He breathed, a sound so small it couldn't carry the short distance across the rooftop.

But from above, his ethereal counterpart heard it anyway. And he saw Sylar laugh a little in response to Peter's disbelief, the deep, pleasant sound catching in his chest. Equal parts horrified and entranced, Peter struggled to believe what he was witnessing from this man and that voice and those lips: the fearsome lone wolf who'd always killed before letting someone get too close, close enough to hurt him.

Yet, he saw his other self's eyes roam between Sylar's, so close below his own. And looking at the men now, having already obliterated so many boundaries to have gotten this far, sharing in the midst of the rubble they'd created, Peter could see every scar that had transpired between them, scrawling signatures embedded below one another's skin. They'd never be free of the other. They were already imprinted, marked forever like tattoos.

And for the very first time, it looked something close to beautiful.

On the ground, eyes wide and glistening, Peter hesitated slightly before skimming his knuckles across Sylar's cheekbone. The murderer caught his hand, cradling it between both his larger, stronger ones, the hands that had spilled an ocean of innocent blood long ago. "Only if you want it," he smirked, "otherwise I was joking."

Peter's answering grin illuminated his entire face, an emotion so potent that his unseen counterpart hungered for it, ached for it, even just to know what it felt like.

Because he was pretty sure he'd never smiled like that in his life. And he'd never known such a certainty as he was witnessing unfold before him now. As far back as he could remember, nobody had ever trusted him that much. He'd never found that someone who thought him special enough to want to hold, to want to keep, to want to let so close that it was literally, humanly impossible.

And now his heart broke when he saw himself lie back down against the rooftop, and his last reservations fell and pooled around his ankles as his other self leaned in and murmured against Sylar's lips.

"Alright." He promised.

The kiss was gentle, intimate, achingly tender even from the outside. Soft lips against lips, hands cradling bare skin, smiles curving against one another while Sylar rolled atop Peter, pinning him to the cold ground. Night was entirely upon them now, and the whisper of deepening, breathless kisses leaked into the air, meanwhile on the outskirts Peter felt like he was falling. Like his core was being hauled up into the air by that same old invisible thread, leaving a vital part of himself behind.

The city was evaporating around him. The horizon floating away like ash, the walls closing in upon where he stood, trembling and weak, longing for a breeze to soothe the burning promise of tears gathered in his own eyes.

He'd seen too much. He hadn't seen enough. He didn't understand, yet it made all kinds of sense. That wrong was right and people could change, could forgive, and that try as he might Peter couldn't find the will in himself to deny what he knew had been real, once.

And suddenly he was enveloped by the heat of another man's arms around him, strong and sincere and reliable. He felt the living softness of someone else's skin touching his, although still he stood alone, his lips tingled beneath the sensation he'd almost forgotten was that of another pair against them, it had been so long. And he could sense every part of that body, he could breathe the familiar, comforting scent of his hair, and somehow he tasted the gentle press of Sylar's tongue in his mouth, and he felt safe. Trusted. He felt wanted more than he'd ever been wanted before. And it invaded his senses all at once, unrelenting, overstimulating, until he couldn't discern between fear and arousal and he no longer knew where the Peter on the ground and the Peter on the outskirts collided.

Only then, the shackles keeping him frozen in place broke free. Feeling returned to his limbs and he stumbled away from the illicit lovers as fast as shooting pins and needles would let him.

But he wasn't steady enough. And with that cord now severed, he fell.

Peter knew he should have panicked, but that simple human instinct never set in. Instead, he fell in what felt like slow motion, Sylar's voice ringing soothingly in his ear before impact splintered through the back of his skull with a pain bright enough to transport him.

If they knew they'd try to take it from us...

( )( )( )

"Wait! You don't wanna do this! I can help you!"

Desperate pleas rang out, unanswered, between the corrugated walls of the shipping container. The door still stood ajar, pulsing red emergency lights leaking inside to split the darkness of the cell. The ruckus of the revolt was fading, outside. No one else was coming to check on them.

Through the gloom, Sylar saw the eyes of the intruder go wide above invisible fingers he tightened around her throat. Still reeling from this woman's sudden arrival, it was only now that he placed her face in his memory. Or, more aptly, Nathan Petrelli's memory. And before he could chase the line of inquiry as to what had prompted Tracy Strauss's appearance in this prison, Sylar clocked a multi-hued, R-branded keycard on the ground below her stiletto heels scrabbling in mid-air. It was unmistakable as the same device that had previously unlocked the restraints back in his personal prison.

Renautas.

So Miss Strauss worked for the organization responsible for the entire mess Sylar had awoken to find himself in. And even if he was currently disoriented by the threat of too many prophetic paintings still littering the floor, and even though his blood was hammering in his ears and it felt like the foundations of his person were crumbling to pieces inside, the one life preserver Sylar could cling to through any rage of storm was, luckily, revenge.

"You can 'help' me?" He recited, teeth bared, and dragged his hostage higher up the wall. Her high heels scrabbled louder. "You mean you can string me up in a box for all time?"

Under different circumstances, it might have been impressive how well Tracy maintained some semblance of composure while gasping unsteadily for air. "It was wr-wrong – what they did to you. Wh-what I did. I can accept that now. I-I'm sorry. I just wanna make it right. I'm sorry."

Sylar forced himself to ignore the lack of an alarm ringing inside his skull, as if shaking off a bothersome fly. Because he didn't even care if she was telling the truth or not, if she'd somehow managed to bypass his lie detection ability too, or even if that power had now been lost to him entirely. He just needed a reason. Any reason, a tendril to cling to, to haul himself free from the deadly, disorienting waters that was this place and those paintings and the mass of confusion forming behind his eyes. He didn't feel like himself anymore. He just needed someone to blame.

"And what, exactly, did you do to me?" Sylar asked darkly, daring her to say the magic words.

"R-Renautas didn't want you two together. They thought you were too dangerous. Too much of a threat. And my – my ability – it was the only way to take you down long enough to separate you. I thought I was doing the right thing." Tracy insisted, blue eyes wide, strain visible in her face. "But I don't wanna hurt people anymore. I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm s-sorry I let them get between you. All you wanted was to be left alone. That's all."

Sylar narrowed his eyes as the words sought refuge in the unsteady pit of his mind. His gaze betrayed him and flicked down to the damned scattered canvases at his feet. Two heroes, two unlikely companions, facing the world side by side in the perfect kind of life he could never have... A spasm shot through Sylar's ribcage, but he couldn't be certain if it was due to those cursed prophecies or due to the small voice piping up from behind him.

"...I remember."

Without letting up his telekinetic hold, Sylar's head shot around in the direction of his second captive pinned to the opposite wall: the one he had wanted so badly to forget was still there. The one he wished it was easier to hate and to blame and to dispose of right then rather than suffer through a resurgence of those same cluttered, contradicting emotions from the fight, those deadly waters that swallowed him entirely again. Sylar couldn't breathe. He may as well have been drowning.

And the worst part was Peter Petrelli didn't even try to struggle. He wasn't shouting or gasping or terrified in his restraints the way Tracy was. Instead, he was smiling. Just a little, alight with awe, as if he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life; as if he wasn't sure if he should laugh or start crying. And the way he looked at Sylar only made him drown faster.

"I remember everything."

( )

Peter wasn't afraid anymore.

Memories flooded the banks of his mind like an unrelenting tide. And he bathed in them, welcomed them, like taking a deep breath for the first time in forever. He remembered Parkman's basement; he remembered weeks upon weeks of a fugitives' life that had transpired since; he remembered himself and Sylar fighting, united, against a Company that condemned them their bond. And he remembered the moment it had all come crumbling down around them. A ring of perpetrators. Sylar's tear-stricken face just out of reach. An unrelenting glass pane that had held them apart at the final hurdle...

And even though his skull was aching from the impact with the wall and he was immobilised like a hunter's prize mounted on display, and even though Sylar was fearsome and dangerous and so unsure it even muddied the air around him, Peter's heart still felt lighter than a feather, inside.

After all that they'd been through, he'd really thought he'd never see this man again.

The smile that broke over his face warmed him entirely. But in Sylar, it seemed, it stirred the opposite reaction. Peter saw the man's shoulders rise to his ears, saw his eyes dart over and away, unable to face the reaction the mere sight of him had incited in another. And the next wave that broke over Peter was an immeasurable sadness, washing away the previous tide.

"Listen to me, buddy," He croaked past the force around his throat, licking suddenly dry lips. "Don't do this. Okay?"

As if the rose-coloured film and birdsong was abruptly shut off, the full weight of the scene caught up to Peter at last. He never even considered being concerned for himself, so busy as he was worrying for the woman just visible over Sylar's shoulder, but mostly for the emotionally unstable, impulsive killer in the middle of it all who didn't remember him. What they'd become. What they'd lost. He didn't even remember himself.

"You don't wanna do this, Sylar." Peter continued. "You hurt her, and it'll only back up everything Renautas wants to say: that you're too dangerous, that you're just a killer. But you're not that guy anymore!"

( )

'Buddy'? The word rang around Sylar's skull like a foreign object, something that didn't belong. 'You're not that guy anymore'. Meanwhile, Peter strained a little against his bonds, but he didn't force his way free like they both knew he could, like he had done in the past, long ago.

Sylar wanted him to try. He still wanted the thrill of a struggle, only now more than ever.

First those impossible paintings, then Peter refusing to fight him, now this...? It didn't fit. It didn't make sense. The whole thing was an act – a trick. It reeked of Petrelli Manipulation, with the family's fingerprints stamped all over it, but Sylar couldn't think clear enough to get free when buried beneath the inescapable weight of the empath's shameless emotion. His eyes. Those words. Words that could never have possibly been designed with Sylar in mind. But then why did something about them feel so vaguely familiar?

I'm not that guy anymore, Peter, you know that...

The killer was shaken to his senses by Tracy Strauss's attempts at forming a sentence. "He's right – you don't have to -!" Snarling, Sylar forced her jaw shut with his ability without even sparing her a glance. The container walls were closing in on him enough as it was, another sensory overload was the last thing he needed.

Strangely, the thought never occurred to him to silence Petrelli, too.

He let a hoarse chuckle tear out of his throat, despite the fact he found nothing at the present moment funny. "This is who I am, Peter." He shrugged, schooling his expression into something resembling dignity. "And I'm never gonna change, not ever."

"You already did."

( )

Sylar stole all the air from his lungs, as surely as if he had crowded in on Peter and gently breathed the substance from his lips. Partly this was due to the guy clenching his telekinetic collar around Peter's throat tighter, but even the sight of him, alone, sent tears burning at the backs of Peter's eyes.

He wanted so badly to touch him. To hug him, to bridge the divide and hold him close and wait, wait, wait for as long as it took for the memories to return to him, too. Because Peter was alone out here on this olive branch, and still he couldn't reach. Still, he wasn't able to comfort him. And he didn't need to have once walked the pages of Sylar's soul to know the guy would be investing more effort in keeping overwhelming memories at bay than just letting them flow in on their own.

"Look: all these paintings, all these moments? They happened." Peter nodded at the blood-stained canvases trailing a path from the neighbouring container, through the blasted hole in the wall to litter around Sylar's bare feet. Peter swallowed around a rising lump in his throat when he tore his attention from the painting of that intimate, muddy embrace (one that had healed him more than the circle of ambulances and emergency workers after hours upon hours of thinking Sylar had been lost to the East River) only to see the other man quickly avert his gaze from that same canvas, too.

The evos met eyes helplessly, as if it was always supposed to be this way. Even bedraggled, even bloodstained, even stripped down to the most demeaning prisoner garments Renautas could throw at him; Sylar was still beautiful in his presence, alone. Peter couldn't believe he hadn't noticed this just minutes before.

"We happened." He insisted breathlessly, blinking back visions of a night and a rooftop and a promise that had transpired long ago. "It was all real. And Renautas, they knew. They found out and they tried to take it from us, just like you said they would –"

( )

Having been listening, enraptured, despite everything he knew screaming at him to do the opposite, Sylar finally snapped.

"I'M NO HERO!" The vicious sound rebounded off the walls and he lashed out an invisible blade, driven purely by instinct, at the onslaught of lies that deafened his ability with their silence.

A choked cry of pain. Then there was just Sylar, his pounding heart and his own heavy breathing.

Peter's head was bowed, his long, dark hair hanging down. For a moment the thought that he was dead both thrilled and terrified Sylar at the same time. But Peter moaned and huffed and slowly lifted his head, and Sylar's insides twisted when he saw the long, violent cut tearing diagonally across the empath's face.

Blinking hazily through blood, Peter didn't even appear angry by the outburst, just shaken. He suffered silently through the pain and when he mustered the strength to speak again his low, soft voice shook slightly. "I know, right now, that you're angry. I get it. You're scared, and you're lonely – so was I. But we were never meant to be alone, Sylar, don't you remember? You and me, what Parkman did to us, our city? We survived there, together. We saved each other. And it's okay to be afraid. You're still the bravest person I know."

The words were like static in Sylar's ears, yet still he could hear them. The darkness within the shipping container was vast and rich, but still he could watch a shiny drop of blood run from Peter's slashed brow, over his cheekbone, and down beside his parted, asymmetrical lips. Reality warped for a heartbeat of time and Sylar saw himself in some sort of hospital theatre, bending forward over the slumbering form of Peter Petrelli, pressing his lips to the man's forehead, and then making an incision in the centre of his kiss until a dark drop of blood welled up and spilled over his skin. He didn't want to do it. But he had to. Because Peter had asked him, because Peter needed his help, and some things were just more important than the mass of his own fears –

Sylar battled his way free from the thorns of the vision with an inhuman force to rival all his powers combined.

( )

The cut splitting across Peter's face ached and burned, his skin was sticky and he tasted blood in his mouth. His abilities, along with oxygen, were being deprived of their functions, he wasn't healing fast enough, and it would be so easy for Peter to lose himself to terror, but he wouldn't. Because years of a life never lived were counting on him, now, alive only through his memories.

Peter remembered every second within Parkman's dream city. Every minute of Sylar's cruel, ruthless struggle for redemption. He still remembered the moment he first realised the other man wasn't a sociopath or a psychopath incapable of remorse: merely a super powered man who ran from the might of it like a looming tidal wave, always outrunning, afraid to slow down and let a lifetime of regret sweep him under. And when it did, it wrecked him. And Peter held his hand through it. And it wasn't selfish or entitled, then; Sylar was human and vulnerable and ashamed, and it was only when he'd began to try and push Peter away that the bleeding-hearted empath finally conceded to his feelings, against his will, despite his best efforts to resist. Because as soon as Sylar decided he wasn't worthy of a meaningful connection after all, Peter couldn't possibly deny him one.

Sylar wasn't a monster. He never had been. He was just lost, angry, vengeful, and armed with a hunger and weapons to do something awful about it. He had been running all his life, from himself, from anyone else, from everything. Just as he was again now.

"This isn't you anymore, Sylar." Peter urged through gritted teeth. "You worked so hard to be better. Please, just – just don't throw away years of redemption for this!"

Peter only got a glimpse of Tracy Strauss's blown, anxious eyes behind Sylar before the man closed in upon him and eclipsed all view of the cell. The telekinetic hold was eclipsed by the real, tight firmness of a hand grabbing Peter's throat and the killer snarled, scrutinising his face just like he had one night long ago, when he was still frightening and they were still strangers, before Peter had been allowed to see behind the shroud of 'villain'.

The telekinesis did most of the work. Sylar wasn't holding too tight: he was just close. Just putting on a display of strength and bravado that Peter could see clean through. The older man's hand was large and burning hot, and although Peter gasped for air and his body protested the ache, a part of him still welcomed the touch just to be near him again.

Sylar's lips were thin, dangerous, but his words were a whisper, as if he had every intention of being furious but just couldn't muster the rage. "I am a monster, Peter. I kill people. I torture them. I've killed you. When you freed me from those shackles tonight I was going to slit your throat then and there, and would have if it weren't for the drugs stopping my abilities." Deep, dark eyes roved over Peter's face as if searching for the answers to be written there. As if Peter were a time piece and the watchmaker was squinting at him through a magnifying lens, scouring for the faulty split in a gear. "Why would you ever care what happens to me?" A thumb brushed lightly across Peter's chin, smearing blood through stubble to his jaw, before Sylar squeezed his windpipe tighter.

Peter choked for air, eyes watering and limbs having long lost feeling. The pressure increased to a threatening level, painful but not yet fatal, but all Peter could think was of that same hand tenderly cradling his neck while lips caressed his skin, and those fingers stroking through his hair or curling around his own when he was happy or upset or scared. Peter recalled a bedraggled, broken man from the future holding his face with those same hands and instilling him with courage. And he remembered the fight and the rain and the kiss on the fire escape afterwards, and how for the next few hours, even though the world was ending, he'd truly felt like everything was going to be okay.

"Because you're my friend." Peter confessed, as if he wasn't struggling to breathe. As if it had always been this easy to say the words he'd never actually voiced in all this time. "And I love you."

( )

Sylar felt a flicker crack through him. Like an electric shock frying his every nerve ending. He wavered slightly on the spot, then pried his hand free from Peter Petrelli with difficulty to stagger back, to put some space between them. The whole facade broke at last, cracks stretching away into the horizon and ready to fall apart at the slightest push. Sylar could breathe easier, at last.

He tried to laugh, looking anywhere but at the wounded little man for something to anchor him, but it failed. He really wished that word hadn't broken over him in its entirety, shards and sharp edges scratching him all the way down.

"Now I know you're lying." He said with a frail smirk. The words didn't come out strong as impervious as he had intended. "You could never love me."

It was almost a relief, in a way. To see the strings that then broke the power of the illusion. But if the game was up, why wasn't Peter surrendering? Why wasn't he getting defensive, as people did, as games always went, when one lost? Instead, he just looked at Sylar through the blood dripping down his face and through messy, overgrown strands of his hair, and rather than hatred all that was there for Sylar was an elusive emotion that he might finally have just learned the name of.

"You're wrong." Peter gently insisted, casting some sort of spell from the depths of those large, hazel eyes that made Sylar actually begin to doubt himself. "You can love someone e-even if you hate the things they've done. Even if you'll never... forget. And I forgave you, Sylar. A long time ago."

Sylar's grasp on the situation dislodged once again, and he reeled, yearning to dig his fingers into his own skull and check why that fucking lie-detector power was dormant, if it was broken, or if it was even still there at all!

Desperate, with crackling electricity betraying his emotions and rippling down his arms, he turned his back on Peter Petrelli and throttled the noose even tighter around Tracy's neck. Just because he had to. Because she had been listening, had witnessed the whole humiliating thing, and because murder was natural and familiar and always the same and control was rapidly unspooling from Sylar's grasp –

"Wait, wait, wait!" Peter yelped. "Don't hurt her! I can't let you do this, not after how far you've come, Sylar, please. You're meant for so much more than this, I swear! Please, just... let me help you!"

The killer stopped, recoiling into himself and scowling deeply at the ground rather than feel the impact of Peter's eyes upon him. Peter who had always been there: to challenge, to hate, to destroy, to play with when inspiration struck, to trust as a brother, to actually let himself miss when it turned out not to be true, to later turn to for help with Nathan's voice in his head when the rest of the world offered nothing. And now he was promising the sustenance Sylar had desperately sought all his life, from anyone, in any shape or form, rather than be so alone.

But now that it was here, it was too real. Too suffocating, too claustrophobic, the thought of tearing down his patch-worked, fortified walls and rendering himself helpless, open for rent, all over again. There were only so many times a person could claw themselves back to their feet after a fall, even one who could heal. And opening up, caring? It would mean giving his enemy the power to undo him and then hoping for the best – Sylar would be as well sharing the secret location of his kill spot, pressing a knife into Peter's hand, and simply trusting him not to drive it in!

But just having, just holding, such trust...? Wouldn't that be the most special ability of all?

Slowly, the killer turned on the spot, nudging painted depictions of the man he could never be aside with his bare feet. Peter had always been a bright light, too bright to look at sometimes, too bright to deny at others. But this close he cast Sylar's every unflattering angle into display, and there was nowhere left to hide his scars. Sylar was ugly in Peter's light. And he just wasn't ready to confront that.

"I'm sorry, Peter." His cold murmur rebounded around the pulsing shadows of the container. And even through unwanted, gathered tears in his eyes, Sylar saw the little hero's expression fall when he came to a stop in front of him, all the progress Peter thought he'd made unravelling before his eyes. "But I don't need help."

Peter's mouth fell open and his heart broke in every twitch of his face when Sylar pinned the guy harder to the wall, entirely cutting off his air supply or any strangled retorts. He brought up his other hand, blood heating in his veins, finger aimed directly at Peter's head, just to make it stop, to make it all go away –

His vision was so tightly focused that he completely forgot about restraining Tracy, too, until icy fingers gripped his ankle and a freezing, splitting agony erupted through him. His yell echoed gratingly around the iron container.

"Peter, run!" Tracy shouted from the ground, from where she'd fallen from her bonds, but Sylar wrenched himself free from her clutches and rebounded too quickly with a blast of power that sent her slamming back into the wall. Her head took the bulk of impact with a sickening crack, and she just gazed wearily up at Sylar rather than fight.

Any other time he might have admired the courage it must have taken not to escape when she had the chance. She could have sneaked away just then and he might never even have noticed. But right now he was possessed, outside of himself, thrusting the controls over to anyone, anything else and begging them to take the reigns from him.

"You should have saved yourself." He hissed, as the pain in his leg pulsed quieter.

But Tracy's lips just twitched weakly into a reminiscent smile, and she looked delighted with herself as she spoke someone else's words. "H...heroes don't... run away."

Heroes.

The word was a catalyst. A spark igniting over a stagnant pool of gasoline, and Sylar was beyond the capacity for catching the match as it fell.

Flames engulfed him from the inside out, numbing the pain with more pain, and Tracy didn't try to resist and she didn't even look sorry, for her fate nor her final choice, when he snarled and descended upon her with tears blinding his eyes and murder haemorrhaging his heart.

( )

The invisible chains strangling Peter's airway lifted.

He fell, crumpling to the floor on limbs that were too numb to support him. Still regeneration refused to revive him, his powers didn't rush back in time, and so he just heaved for breath and tried to crawl closer, his cries tearing uselessly from his throat.

"Sylar – DON'T!"

But the screams had already started, and he knew it was too late.

All he could do was scrunch his eyes closed and try not to vomit, sore and cut and trembling against the cold metal, at the sounds of someone else's skin splitting open and blood pattering to the ground.

( )( )( )

Cloaked in darkness in the back seat of her car, as trees and shadows and country roads sped past in a blur out the window, Erica Kravid clung to her tablet so tightly she might snap it. She didn't wince at the screaming or tear her eyes from the classified transmission when blood spread across the container floor.

She didn't dare even blink as Sylar murdered Tracy Strauss live on camera.

A/N: Poor Tracy X'( I'm sorry to anyone who is upset by this development, but Tracy is properly dead. Dead dead, not shoot-Noah-through-the-eye-and-undo-it dead, I'm afraid.

I've gone back and forth over the years on the idea of killing her off, because it's so sad to lose one of the strong, complex, empowered women of Heroes. But Tracy needed a worthy end to her arc, and rather than just disappear entirely without a trace on the way to Heroes Reborn (which is the trajectory this story heads toward, remember), I wanted to give her a big moment, her own choice, and let her heroic sacrifice cause ripples throughout the story and other characters. Cause if she has to die she has to die well, and without her sacrifice all of Renautas' other captives wouldn't have been freed (Micah and Hiro included), and Sylar wouldn't have lashed out last chapter and Peter never would have recovered his memories! And the rest of the ending to come couldn't have happened...

So thank you Tracy X')

On the topic of Peter and Sylar – please let me know what you think of this chapter. I did promise angst and feels, after all, and I hope it was enjoyable to read!

We're soooo close to the end now. I'm estimating one more chapter then an epilogue, but you know me by now hehe, this could easily stretch into two more and an epilogue depending on how the word count goes. Either way, I can't thank you enough if you've stuck with me and our boys all this time!

All I ask is that you please come back for the very last chapters and see how the story ends. If you thought this chapter was tough, you can look forward to more tears and more feels and more grand gestures in the next one, but all in the best way, I hope...